In Somno, Pax
by windscryer
Summary: He stays up at night watching her sleep. Shules.


For Shules Ficathon '08 on Psychfic. Prompt: Sleep

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He stays up at night watching her sleep.

She doesn't know it, but he's been doing this since before they were even dating.

Since the very first moment he knew that he was irrevocably, undeniably, lost to her, in point of fact.

He was watching a movie. Pretty in Pink maybe. Or old episodes of the A-Team. Something on the TV.

It had nothing to do with what he was watching.

(It must have been A-Team because he remembers Mr. T saying something that he normally would have laughed at. But he wasn't laughing because it hit him, like the proverbial ton of bricks. Actually, despite no personal experience, he was pretty sure that a ton of bricks would have been a lot more subtle.)

(Or was it Molly Ringwald that should have made him laugh?)

The fact that he's not sure what he was watching tells him that it was a doozy of an epiphany. He does remember that he almost choked on a pineapple slice.

He loved her.

And he didn't just love her. He loved most representatives of the female gender.

This wasn't love. Oh no, this was much more . . . all-encompassing.

It was deeper, wider, longer, purer, thicker, stronger than just love.

Sitting on his couch at three o'clock in the morning he realized that he couldn't—didn't _want—_to live without her.

And not just as coworkers. He wanted to go home to her after work.

Or with her as the case would more likely be.

He wanted to be able to sweep her into his arms and kiss her—so deeply her toes curled and her spine arched and she just melted into a boneless pile of warm skin and lax muscles against him—whenever and wherever he felt like it. Just because he could.

He wanted to make her cheeks flush with an unexpected, "I love you," as her coworkers watched.

He wanted to keep her safe, from the darkness of her job and the hurts of the world.

He _needed_ her in his life, completely and forever his.

He left the TV on, the pineapple sitting on the table, and hurried out into the night on his bike.

Arriving at her house he'd very carefully picked the lock on her back door, disarmed her alarm system using the last two digits of the years both her cats were born, and then made his way silently through the house—a can of tuna distracting the aforementioned cats.

Once in her room he'd moved the rocking chair in the corner—the one her grandmother had given her, the very one her mother had sat in to rock her to sleep throughout her childhood—and watched her.

He didn't sleep.

He just watched her until dawn.

He left just ahead of her alarm clock and she had never known of his presence.

That wasn't the only night he'd done that either.

He never disturbed her, keeping a silent vigil over her whenever the urge to make sure she was okay, or just to bask in her presence, hit him.

Once, after a small child had been killed and she had been unable to do anything about it, nightmares had plagued her. He'd sat on the edge of her bed and murmured softly to her until she calmed and went back to sleep.

He hadn't touched her for fear of waking her, though it almost killed him when she cried softly.

When a former case came back to haunt her in the form of a new parolee who showed much too creepy an interest in her, he brought a gun that sat on the dresser next to him, shining faintly in the moonlight coming through the window.

He would have killed for her without a thought if her home had been breached.

Soon after she finally accepted his offer of a date things changed.

He didn't have to bribe the cats or pick the lock. He was given a key and the cats would come to sit in his lap while he watched her.

And then she officially made him the luckiest man on Earth when she said that single magical sentence: "Yes, Shawn Spencer. I will marry you."

He still watched over her in her sleep.

But it was so much more than that now.

When nightmares chased her he could pull her into her arms and hold her close until the shadows slipped away.

When she rolled over it was into his embrace instead of away from his view.

And when he worried about her job and the dangers of being as good as she was, he could reassure himself with a hand on her hip or a kiss on her shoulder.

He didn't lose so much sleep now.

Not only because he didn't have to drive to and from his apartment every night, but because he could finally actually sleep. Only the knowledge that she was safe and _there_ could relax him enough to submit to unconsciousness.

His subconscious kept track of her through physical contact. If she moved with the slightest bit of unease he would wake to make sure she was all right.

She seemed to like this arrangement, too.

He often woke in the morning to her draped over him like a blanket, oblivious to the world, but instinctively snuggling up to his side.

Most days he never wanted to get out of bed because lying here with her was safe and clean and as close to perfection as one could get on Earth. For him anyway.

Only Juliet rising would persuade him to do the same.

He would follow her like a shadow or a puppy dog as she readied for work, watching with fascination as she applied her makeup and chose her clothes and ate her breakfast, skimming the newspaper to get a feel for how things were going in the city.

They'd discuss his plans for the day, any cases they were working jointly, and whether he'd be meeting her for lunch or if she should fend for herself.

She rarely fended for herself, even if that was the conclusion they reached in the morning.

He was aware of her now on levels he hadn't been previously, no matter what time of day it was, always alert to subtle nuances of her personality or speech or mannerisims that he hadn't noticed before, cataloging them for later perusal when they had to be apart.

But his favorite time is still night when he can watch her sleep.

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Review, please and thanks.


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